Low Water Pressure on the Hot Side Only? It Could Be Your Shower Cartridge

So when you have this on cold it's fine but when you put it on hot the

pressure

drops con

side

rably so I'm going to show you how to fix it in this video if you have a problem of low

water

pressure

coming out of the

shower

head and it's For both hot and cold

water

, the first thing I would do is check and make sure there isn't any kind of calcium buildup in

side

of this, so I would take the

shower

head off and check to make sure there isn't any. blockage there, but if you

only

have a low pressure problem on the hot or cold side, then there are a couple of things to check.

If

your

house is new enough to have a manifold you may want to double check the manifold to see if any of the shut off valves are closed, if they are or if they are partially closed then you need to make sure they are completely closed. open, which

could

solve the problem, if that is not the problem, it most likely is the problem. Inside the shower valve is a

cartridge

that controls the flow of water between hot and cold and mixes the water so that it gets the right temperature. These can break down over time and you can buy replacements at the hardware store or online.

In this video, I will show you how to remove an old

cartridge

and replace it with a new one, which should fix

your

problem. You should first make sure the water is turned off when you are working on any plumbing project. So once you shut off on the water main or the collector, depending on what you have in your house, you can go ahead and start now. The first thing we need to do is remove this handle, so in our case there is a screw behind it. This is we just need to take out this little plug and then there's a Phillips screw in here, so we're going to unscrew it and that's going to allow us to remove the handle.

You also have a temperature limiter in here, so if that's not your problem. you don't have enough water pressure but it's just not hot enough then you may have a problem with your water temperature limiter setting and you can adjust that here inside of this this is not the case with ours so I'm going to remove this and then I'm going to remove this studio board, I think that's how you say it. I always have trouble pronouncing that I'm going to remove these screws here now that these screws are out we can remove this plate and we have access to the valve and then when we remove this metal plate it should come off well that's not good really , okay, sometimes apparently they can be difficult to remove, so I'm going to use these pliers to help get it out, so Now there's a clip here that holds this cartridge in place.

We need to remove it. Now we will need to use this cartridge removal tool to remove the cartridge from the valve. It's actually a small screw on the inside that will screw into the front. of this cartridge that will help us extract it. We want to make sure this screw is pulled back far enough that it can seat around the cartridge, so if it's too far in it won't be able to get around it. what we need to do is back this off and then we'll screw this into place and then we'll tighten the screw so put this here it's around the cartridge now let's screw this into place and then tighten this and hopefully we can grab this handle and get the valve out now, if it doesn't move we need to take an adjustable wrench and tighten it half a turn and try again, I'm pretty sure this valve is damaged as it's very hard to get out, so you should be able to turn this handle and move this valve back and forth and pull until it comes out pulling and I'm turning at the same time, you don't want to rock it. side to side just back and forth to get this out just apply constant pressure not too much yeah okay this is what the cartridge looks like it's from our shower and the water goes into these holes here, hot and cold, to control the water flow.

Coming in, this is actually what a shower valve looks like on the inside of the wall, this is the front part here, you can see this clip that holds it in place, then you have this bottom piece here, this is actually for a valve that controls the tub spout this top piece goes to the shower head and then the heat and cold come in from the sides so this is what it looks like if it wasn't inside the wall so in This one we're going to remove this. cartridge here and I'll show you what it looks like, if you don't have a damaged one, how easy it is to take them out, so first we just need to take out this pin here at the top and then we'll take our removal tool. and we'll put it at the end here.

I'm going to screw this. Look, these fins are on the side of this cartridge. We can just take this T-handle and twist it back and forth to pull it out. Look how easy, it's super easy, so there's the new cartridge. Let's put it back in its place with this shower head. Now before I put it back in place, I'm going to make sure there's no calcium or anything else inside. This valve is going to cause problems with the new cartridge. There are some mineral deposits on the inside, so I'm going to get a wire brush to clean it.

This is a three-quarter inch wire brush. I'm just going to put this. the inside here and just scrape off any extra minerals that are on the inside so that way we have a nice, smooth place to put the new cartridge in, that's how the inside of the valve looks pretty clean. Now we're going to go ahead and put the new cartridge in place also before we put this in, we're all going to put some waterproof plumbing grease on it, so we're going to put that on the rubber seals and then you're going to slide this into place.

Now you don't need a lot of fat, just a little bit and we'll spread it here. Do the same on the other side and on the front you will see the h and c. I need to make sure this is on top when you place this, so we'll glue it on. It comes in nice and easy. That's all the fat we put in it. Now we'll take the pin and put it back in. There is also a small notch on this cartridge model, you want to make sure it is pointing down so it is off. Now we can reinstall everything, so first we're going to put this metal frame back on, we put this plate on, we need to adjust it so it fits snugly. that way an airtight seal is formed and this does not come loose, then we can put the temperature limiter back and we can put the handle back, okay, now the moment of truth we already have the water back on and we are going to see if we have maximum water pressure on the hot side so there is cold and if we go to hot we still have maximum pressure oh yes, hot water.

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